In the town where I live right now, today there are 9 more hot days a year than 42 years ago.

In Montreal, there is only one more hot day per year now than when I was born.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine the difference is 4 days.

The Times reached out to every cardinal and bishop said by Archbishop Viganò to have known about the alleged sanctions on Cardinal McCarrick by Benedict. More than a dozen of them declined or did not answer requests for comment.

Of course, they can’t comment. Because whatever they say, Vigano is very likely to whip out documents that will prove they are lying. Even from what I’ve seen (and I have zero information over what’s been made public), it’s clear that Francis removed the sanctions his predecessor had placed on rapist McCarrick.

That’s a freaking bomb, folks. That a Pope should reverse the punishment placed by his predecessor on somebody as malignant as McCarrick. . . I have no words.

Please understand that I very much want the Catholic Church to survive and become stronger. But that will only happen if every rapist and molester in the Church is thrown out in shame and brought to justice.

You need to be an eccentric millionaire to shop at the farmers markets here in farm country. The one we visited today offers a tiny bunch of butter lettuce for $4.50, one tiny homemade cookie for $3, one tiny bunch of dill for $6, a small cup of lemonade for $6, three tomatoes for $8, and so on. It’s either buy a used helicopter or make a salad with farm produce. I bought a couple of things and then drove to the supermarket to get everything else I needed for a salad. If I’d gotten everything I needed for the salad at this market, that would have been my whole Labor Day food budget.

I believe these are just trial balloons. Think about how easy it is to drive everybody in your street, for instance, crazy with a little device like this. In Europe, it would be especially easy to do.

So here is what I’ve been able to gather. Pope Benedict knew, of course, about the abusers in the Church. He tried to do something about it and did impose some sanctions on McCarrick and some others. However, the conspiracy of abusers was too strong and he was never allowed to do anything serious. Hence his comments to the visitors who brought complaints of abuse to him in person that his power ends at his door and he is impotent to stop the abuses. His position was like that of the Queen who can’t stand up to the evil Prime Minister (a.k.a. the head of the conspiracy.)

Benedict had to resign because the conspirators wanted him out. Francis was brought in because he has an affinity with the conspirators. The gamble is that he will be forgiven a lot more by the general public because of his progressive bleatings on a variety of issues. And the gamble is paying off.

Bluntly put, Francis is never going to do anything to the conspirators at the highest levels of the Church because he’s one of them.

I’ve read a bunch of stuff from obscure places like “National Catholic Register” and others for weeks to figure this all out. There is an added bunch of complexities like financial corruption and internecine power squabbles but I don’t care about them right now. I care about abuse. Every large organization has power trips and money shadiness but none of them end up raping kids and abusing youngsters en masse. Except for this one. There’s something clearly specific to this particular organization that makes it a hub for sexual abuse of boys and young men.